Madonna – Material Girl
FORMER England footballer Graeme Le Saux peers out from the African undergrowth.
With David Attenborough otherwise engaged, it is Le Saux’s chance to play TV’s voice of God. Le Saux wants viewers of ITV’s Extinct to dial the phone number and thereby save the gorillas that appear in the bushes to his rear.
“When you discover that these animals are balancing on the window ledge of extinction, it just kills you,” says Graeme, nearly moved to tears.
We hear his lament. It’s not every day you hear a footballer warning about defenestrated gorillas. More often it’s an animal rights group showing you pictures of gorillas being wired up to the National Grid or skinned for their fur and meat.
In any case, gorillas get a good press. Like dolphins and panda bears, they are popular. Not so the fire ant? Who will save the wasp? What of rats? And rats need our protection.
While Le Saux throws himself to the ground and pleads with poachers to spare the gorilla and flay him instead, the Star leads with Madonna in a fur coat.
“LIKE A VERMIN,” says the headline. And here is Madonna wearing 40 chinchillas about her famous person. For the non-chinchilla expert, the Star says these creatures are rat-like.
Yes, Madonna is wearing the pelts of 40 skinned rats. Each to her own, we say. And we are unsure whether to lambaste her or pull on a mink-lined glove and pat her on her soft back. Aren’t we constantly being told that there are more rats than people in Blighty? Won’t rats outlast humanity when nuclear Armageddon and global meltdown come? Offing 40 of the biting, gnawing sewer-dwellers can only send out a warning to their kin.
But there are some among us who would defend the rat from being skinned and put to some use. The Mail spots the £35,000 chinchilla coat and sees the fur fly.
The paper says that Madonna, “wrapped in the fluffiest fur”, could not have looked “cosier”. Indeed, she does look as snug as a bug, or, indeed, an extended family of chinchillas.
But Karen Chisholm is not pleased. She works for the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Says she: “Wearing a coat made of dozens of animas who were strangled or electrocuted got Madonna the attention she so desperately craves.”
And: “But it also brought painful deaths to small, gentle animals who died for her vanity.”
Yes, the chinchilla is small. But were it large would it need our protection less or more? And if it were a big animal, would Madonna be better off going out with a gun and shooting the thing?
Or should she stick to wearing leather..?
Posted: 8th, December 2006 | In: Tabloids Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
